jeudi 6 novembre 2014

Blog: blowing the story out of the water Russian incursions (eng)

First came the Swedish imaginary "Russian sub" signal, followed some frantic hunt for an "foreign underwater intruder". The
Swedish officials were at pains not to give out a nationality, but that
it didn't stop the media from putting their own spin on the 'events'. In spite of this the local & international press hurriedly jumped to the conclusion that it was Russian, (somehow without the slightest shred of evidence or source).Then came the media reports of multiple Russian military air sorties over Europe & the Black Sea, described by NATO as "provocative". The NATO air intercepts took place in international airspace, something that a lot of the press failed to mention.

At the same time, some of the UK press had a hard time spotting the subtle difference in nationality & make of an Antonov plane that got escorted by fighter jets over London. Was it a Russian plane? No it turned out to be Latvian plane. Finally the make of the plane was identified as being Ukrainian & not Russian.Now we move onto the non-story of a Russian oceanographic ship:

From AFP: The Portugese Navy escorted a Russian
oceanographic ship out of its waters Wednesday in response to the latest
in a series of territorial incursions by a Russian vessel or plane.

Waters? No in fact it took place in the Portuguese Exclusive Economic Zone, (EEZ).

Portugal identified the ship in the section of sea it has
exclusive resource rights over and then guided the vessel back into
international waters, Portugal's Defence Minister Jose Pedro Aguiar-Branco told Portugese press agency LUSA.

An EEZ is not Territorial Waters! In addition to AFP, the BBC picked up the non-story in & cobbled up a series of paragraphs on Russia & the events on Ukraine, to make it look like that it is all somehow connected up. The BBC revealed a little detail that AFP completely missed out:

The Russian ship was in international waters, more than 12 nautical miles (22km) from the coast.

The only snag that I see with this sentence, it doesn't actually give the location or distance of the Russian ship, since it instead unhelpfully refers to 12nm limit for territorial waters. The whole thing has been distorted since an EEZ only gives a country a "sovereign right" to below the surface of the sea. The surface is in INTERNATIONAL WATERS. International airspace or waters, just a minor detail I suppose for the press. Information that might blow the story & associated histrionicsout of the water.

The Russian ship appears to be the RV Professor Logachev, which had in some circles been supposedly connected to the Swedish submarine story. The AIS feed showed that the vessel was trailed by a Dutch warship when it was in the Baltic. https://twitter.com/AirForceFreak74/status/523845233990443009/photo/1. The vessel is listed as being en route to Las Palmas, so taking the shipping lane off Portugal would have made sense. But it wasn't made welcome by the Portuguese Navy.